Reception: Sunday, September 7, 2003 7PM
I have a pet parakeet, Walter. Walter’s trilling,
during dinner or phone conversations, can become
overbearing. At such times, I give Walter the radio to
listen to. This works, quite literally, a kind of
magic. The bird who had been energetically conversing
with a neighborhood of squawks and coos beyond human
interpretation is now totally silent before a singing
machine. The sounds of other birds had made of his
cage a panicked, cramped space. The confusion of the
radio, which enforces a quiet obedience, has
transformed the same cage to a safe space, with all
needs met.
This silencing power of “radio” has existed long
before radio was invented. We can see it in religion,
in children’s games, in any palliative we give
ourselves to cure what we might otherwise choose to
experience.
The focus of this exhibit is sound in space. When
sound is released into a space, what does it do to
this space? Remembering Walter and the sound released
into his cage for a moment, what does the sound
released in this gallery do to you as a listener? How
do we, as hearers of the sound of the space, take
these things in? We are, after all, not parakeets.
What are we listening to? Some spaces will be
transformed radically by what sounds are made in them,
and who is listening. Ultimately, the exhibit is
completed by the hearer.
This exhibit is concerned with exploring sound as an
object. Sound is mutable, almost visual, and very
textural. This exhibit explores its spatial properties
and invites you to do so also.
